By Lisa Yiasemides
It was another big day in Casino Sochi. Two more winners claimed themselves a WPT title each, and the last two starting flights in the Main Event took place.
On top of that, the card room is gearing up for the last weekend of the festival, as play enters the final three days of the series. There is a lot to catch up on, so let’s begin with the latest WPT title-holders.
Big Stack
The first win of the day went to Anatoliy Nikitin after he pipped runner-up Arman Atshemyan to the punch to secure his first victory of the series. Nikitin took the biggest portion of the prize pool, collecting 26,080 CU*/$24,475, while Atshemyan won a very healthy 17,825 CU/$16,729.
Those two players had managed to outlast the 104 field, each of whom paid the 1,100 CU/$1,032 buy-in, creating a total pot of 114,400 CU/$107,396. Anton Milovanov (3rd – 12,435 CU/$11,682), Yuriy Zaharov (4th – 9,130 CU/$8,577), Vladislav Naumov (5th – 6,610 CU/$6,211) and Sergey Terentiev (6th – 5,045 CU/$4,741) all made it to the final table too.
Marat Shafigullin (7th – 4,000 CU/$3,747) bubbled a final table seat, faring much better than Vladimir Bozinovic who bubbled the entire event, finishing in 16th place, with the top 15 paid.
That allowed Aleksey Markelychev (15th – 4,000 CU/$3,757) to take a min-cash worth 1,730 CU/$1,625, and among the other notable finishers was last year’s High Roller champion Garik Tamasyan who collected 1,925 CU/$1,808 for his 12th-place finish.
Turbo Super Bounty
The second event of the day to reach a conclusion was the Turbo Super Bounty. Featuring a 550 CU/$516 buy-in, the one-day event attracted a total of 131 entries. With each elimination giving a bounty bonus to the eliminating player, just seven of the field would make it to the money stages of the main prize pool.
Aleksey Losev was the last player to do just that, but he couldn’t progress any further than 7th place, taking a 1,145 CU/$1,074* min-cash for his result.
Anatolii Zyrin was the unfortunate bubble boy and he was the last player to leave without collecting a share of the 65,500 CU/$61,440 prize pool. Zyrin still has plenty to look forward to, however, as the pro finished second in chips in Day 1b of the Main Event and will be back in action for Day 2, which is already underway.
With the final six decided, they took a short break before continuing to play for the title. First to bust at this point was Sonia-Veronika Shashikhina (1,420 CU/$1,333) who, like Zyrin, also has a big stack in the Main Event after she finished second place in the counts on Day 1a.
Ivan Chetin (1,905 CU/$1,788), Dmitriy Motorov (2,635 CU/$2,473) and Artem Vidergold (3,555 CU/$3,338) placed 5th to 3rd respectively, determining the heads-up line-up.
Andrey Vinnikov and Konstantin Generalov were the last two players standing, and Vinnikov did his best to go the distance, but couldn’t get past Generalov who locked up the win. Vinnikov banked (5,045 CU/$4,737) and Generalov secured the lion’s share of the prize pool, with 7,220 CU/$6,779 in winnings.
* These numbers exclude bounties.
Main Event
Day 1c
The penultimate flight (and the last with an hour-long blind structure) started at 12 pm local time. After 8 levels, the 75 starters had been reduced to 42. Russian poker circuit regular Mikhail Kovalyuk (241,800) built the biggest stack.
Kovalyuk finished a long way ahead of second-chip-leader Alexandr Gaydukov (147,700), and Sangguk Im (138,800), Vage Melikyan (129,000) and Roman Gadzhiev (127,200), who completed the top five.
Defending champion Aleksey Badulin multiplied his stack by 2.5 times what he started with, and he will bring 75,800 through, good for 18th place at the time.
Other notable survivors included Maxim Lykov (8th – 112,800), Maksim Pisarenko (12th – 105,300), Andrey Kotelnikov (79,500) and Andrey Andreev (65,600) who all progress.
Day 1d
The final Day 1 flight saw 22 entries counted. Blinds were cut in half for this one, but despite that 17 of those managed to make it through to the next stage.
Yiriy Kopeikin (106,200), Vyacheslav Goryachev (89,800), Vasiliy Kurdin (88,200), Van Thach Vu (83,800) and Ayrat Shakirov (70,300) did the best with their 30,000-chip starting stacks.
With both of those flights wrapped up, the top stacks going forward all originated through the first three Day 1s. Mikhail Kovalyuk will start in pole position and Aleksandr Chernikov is best placed to challenge.
Mikhail Kovalyuk
Anatolii Zyrin (199,000), Andrey Chernokoz (228,200) and Alexandr Gaydukov (147,700) are all in a strong position too, but late registration will remain open until the end of Level 12, so there will be fresh challengers in the field for them to compete with.
Once registration has closed, the prize pool for the 3,500 CU/$3,275 buy-in event will be confirmed. What is known right now, is that at least 714,000 CU/$668,308 has been generated for the pot so far with 204 entries and re-entries through Days 1a to 1d.
As well as the daily updates here, the live reporting starts today as the heat is turned up in the Main Event. Click here for up-to-the-minute updates from Christian Zetzsche.
Coming up this weekend
Heading into the final weekend of the festival, and there are still a bunch of side events for players to choose from. The highlight will undoubtedly be The Closer, which features a 1,100 CU/$1,029 buy-in. That gets off the mark at 5 pm local time and there will be plenty of play in it, with 40-minute blinds on the clock.
There will also be two further Day 1 flights, with 1b and 1c taking place tomorrow, and with the option to re-enter in each one, there are loads of opportunities for hopefuls to take part.
*1 Casino unit = 70 Rubles